What is your layout for animating with messiah ?

#1

Hi all,

I’m currently reviewing my usual workflow for animating in messiah. As I have the impression that my workflow isn’t too great, I was wondering: How do you guys lay out things in messiah when animating ?

I’m mainly interested in the following things:

  1. Do you use mainly single/double/quad view ? Do you use mainly the camera view or other views as well ?

  2. Do you animate mainly in world/local/parent or screen mode (please no bitching about the edit sphere :)) ?

  3. For what tasks do you use hotkeys (switching channels, switching views etc.) ?

  4. Do you use armatures for selecting/dragging things ?

  5. Do you prefer sliders or controls directly on the mesh for e.g. face shapes or finger poses ?

  6. Do you think there are areas (in regards to the layout) where a plug-in would help ? If possible, I could try to dig in the SDK and program what is needed.

I’m looking forward to your input.

#2

Single view 90% of the time. sometimes i want to see a camera view and perspective at the same time, quad view NEVER, that view is for modeling IMO.

I use hybrid coordinate system. Whatever makes sense, my armatures can either be set to local or world most of the time its local.

I dont really need to use hotkeys, because i dont really switch views or channels much. Channel selection in messiah is really wonky anyway. The new hotkey selection is nice though.

of course 100% armatures for me. they are incredibly powerful. I really would love to see real 3D armatures though.

I prefer all my controls around my mesh rather then a separate window. Im one of those that likes to look at the character while manipulating it, rather then over to the side in some window.

I feel that messiah layout doesnt really get in my way. what gets in my way is lack of certain functionality. im sure you can guess what that is :wink:

#3

I certainly dont have the experience that many of the people here do, but, I thought I would mention what I have found so far.

Ive been working with bipedal rigging, and, some animation to learn the package. I miss some of the viewport layouts that are available in LW (LW has many viewports available, which, might not be that huge a concern but IS nice.) but the overall ease of moving from setup mode to animation still outweighs LW IMHO.

As an example, I like the three window layouts of lightwave, where, one window stretches across the entire window frame, either top or bottom, and then, the other two windows then share space either above or below the “single wide” window. The reason, is, for learning how to animate a character, I like having a “left” or “front” view, a “top” or “bottom” view, and then a view from either camera, or perspective, usually perspective.

Usually, the window that stretches across entirely is set to view “top” or “bottom” and is used for x and z translation. I usually (I say “usually” but I havent spent years and years in lightwave’s layout like this) like to shrink the hieght of this window too, so that the side, and perspective windows have greater detail and screen space.

Again though, Im just one of a thousand monkey’s hammering on a keyboard, who might accidentaly spit out some portion of shakespeare, and not really a pro “animator.” So far, no shakespeare has emerged, only fractions of walkcycles, etc.

Good luck!

-Garin

#4

Hi,

  1. Do you use mainly single/double/quad view ? Do you use mainly the camera view or other views as well ?

I use the main view whit hotkeys to change the viewport and anytimes the double view to see the camera and persp.

  1. Do you use armatures for selecting/dragging things ?

Yeah! For the ikControls, as the legs, arms or head. In my case this controllers has 6 or more channels, I use an armature whit controller drag to modify it´s rotation values, but I control the position whit the edit esphere. I like select the own controller because I can do quick changes in the object channels, it´s more important. In any case, when the controller has only 1 o 2 channels to modify, if I want to use an armature to it, I do it whit one controller drag to modify the channels, and a selecting drag to modify its channels after the possing.

Good luck!

#5

Single view most of the time. Left/right/perspektive and Camera View mainly.

Parent. Because if I use Local Mode, often weird things and flipping happens. I think that has something to do with the Rotation Order of Euler Systems, Gimble Lock and the conversion of the local into parent coordinates. Parent is the sytem Messiahs IK works with, right ? I dunno.

Just for Hands and secondary controllers.
Armatures are a bit weird in their behaviour and feel a bit clunky. Because of their 2d nature and I have often problems selecting the right controllers.
The classic 3d helper objects are just more comfortable/faster.
Armatures are fantastic, no doubt, but its ‘feeling’, the same goes for the edit sphere, is a bit weird and not reliable sometimes.

I prefer working right on the model instead of sliders. For face shapes, I prefer an Osipa style joystick setup.

#6

Thanks for all the replies, that is very helpful! It seems that there are about as many possible layouts as there are animators… :slight_smile:

In LW and in messiah I have mostly worked with the orthogonal views and then switching between them, but somehow I never really got any speed while animating, so probably I will try perspective view, as stooch suggested.

Recently I watched Jeff Lew’s training video about animating. He was working in Animation:Master and I was amazed to see how fast he was at fleshing out the poses. OK, these parts of the video were time-lapsed, but still it was fast… It seemed to me that in A:M there is some sort manipulation mode relative to the screen, like the screen mode in messiah. Maybe it makes sense to work in screen space, since after all, when animating, you shouldn’t think: “A few more degrees on heading and some more on pitch …”, but rather: “I want the leg to bend like this and that arm like that …”. With multi-axis joints you probably have to use quaternion interpolation anyway to avoid the flipping, even though it gets harder then to work with the f-curves.

About armatures: Yes, I like them, too! My only minor niggle: When using a drag-handle for rotating an item, the mouse pointer should stay in place relative to the handle, i.e. you press the mouse button, the mouse pointer disappears, you drag the mouse and release the button and the mouse pointer should appear at the same place again (rather than somewehre else on the screen). I think this would be more consistent with e.g. the drag fields in the GUI and would save a one or two seconds each time you drag a handle. Maybe I will suggest this to Fred as a feature request.

#7

Yes! this will be a good feature, you pay less time moving the mouse, great idea!

#8

I generally want to animate from the camera view. Since pose is so important, I want the best relationship to the frame.

Practically speaking tho’, it’s whatever I need. Sometimes I need to be in closer than the crop, so I’m in a matching perspective view but closer. Sometimes I want to see the character in profile to get a correct walk or run.

And to check facial stuff, I used to use a light parented to the face, and look thru the light view.

Best,
Rick

#9

I’m definetly not an expert at this quite yet, but since you asked.

  1. Do you use mainly single/double/quad view ? Do you use mainly the camera view or other views as well ?

Double view. But I switch back and forth (W-key) I generally have perspective in the left view and camera in the right view.

  1. Do you animate mainly in world/local/parent or screen mode (please no bitching about the edit sphere :)) ?

I have been switching around. Still trying to find my zen as far as that is concerned.

  1. For what tasks do you use hotkeys (switching channels, switching views etc.) ?

Expanding the windows (F1, F2…etc). Switching between the modes (animate, etc).

  1. Do you use armatures for selecting/dragging things ?

Just getting into armatures. But I have setup a nice grouping armature control (similar to tutorial in manual) where I can switch between groups of objects, effects, etc. with a click of a button. Very handy.

  1. Do you prefer sliders or controls directly on the mesh for e.g. face shapes or finger poses ?

So far both. Sliders make sense for hand animation for me. But everything else would be on the mesh.

  1. Do you think there are areas (in regards to the layout) where a plug-in would help ? If possible, I could try to dig in the SDK and program what is needed.

Not sure yet. I’ll think more on that.

#10

yeah the fact that drag control ends up with your mouse in different position is a bug imo. it should be addressed as it gets pretty counter productive.

a good feature request for armatures is a slider armature and 3D armature shapes.

#11

  1. Single view 99% of the time (though choosing top sometimes shows bottom?)

  2. Local and World - World for IK goals, Local for more internal rig controls

  3. Since this was brought up some time ago (do a search on animation tips, there was a REALLY useful thread on it) I’ve got my number keys to the individual channels and the QWE set to independant, motion, all - really helpful when swapping about from controller to controller!

  4. Yes, all the tiem, though a MASSIVE bug with inactive keys can make this seriously erratic! If you have an inactive key on an armature (or really the item driven mby the armature) and you click on that armature, it re-activates the inactive key and the armature shoots off to that location - seriously frustrating!

  5. That’s really personal preference - I’ve probably not done enough of both to give a useful comment! I’ve always done sliders linked to morphs for face stuff but I think my next rig will use bones only, tied to sliders AND giving the freedom to do facial expressions on the fly.

  6. No question about it! - Dynamic Parenting In Place - DynaPIP! One day :shrug:

#12

I work almost exclusively in double mode - one perspective and one camera. I leave the camera on the right because previews automatically grab that side. I switch the perspective window to other views occassionally, but its mostly on perspective. The timeline forms a third window below the two. I find this to be the best use of realty on my wide, single-monitor setup.

I’m a fan of the classic controls: LMB controls local, RMB controls world. If I ever need anything else, I switch manually.

FINALLY - the new toggle channel short key - fantastic. Other than that, I find myself not using shorts as much as I do in other software.

Armatures are great, particularly for layered controls that you can make visible and invisible at will - ie. facial controls, geometry cheat layers, etc.
I DO NOT like them as standard handles, because they do not scale in unison with your viewport and they overlap each other and everything else, making things unselectable behind their sphere. The controls in the old autorig were exemplary I think - double click an armature to enable further controls. That was damned elegant.

Depends. Both are ideally pinned to the screen - ideally, they control as much information visually as possible as to what they are controlling. ie. a brow control as a set of sliders is less appealing than a curve setup to intuitively do the same thing, but visually mimicking the eyebrow. Sliders are nice and efficient though - particularly for non techs like myself.

ONe thing I’m missing is an intuitive setup of the Flex tool. Very powerful in itself, but it doesn’t ever quite work. Changing the type to “rail” helps, but twisting is still an issue.
I suspect there could be a very intuitive “tube limb” module built out of the flex curve that is good for arms, legs, spines, whatever.

DPP is an absolute must - if you could work that out - wooT!!

Your ideas of working to the camera are great.

#13

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